‘Coercion Test’ Could Preserve Religious Freedom

“These practices, and anything like them involving coercion in regard to religion, are what the framers meant to prohibit in adopting the Establishment Clause, for this is what an Establishment of Religion meant at the time. They did not mean, however, to prohibit any voluntary, public, religious speech, or religious expression or symbolism, which do not involve any such coercion.”

Speaking of coercion, the oxymoronically-named Military Religious Freedom Foundation, led by anti-Christian zealot Mikey Weinstein, is trying to eradicate religion in the armed forces, muzzling chaplains who won’t bless homosexuality under the new LGBT law.

Seeing the connection between freedom of religion in civilian and military life, the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty has filed a brief in the Town of Greece case.

“Our military chaplaincy provides an elegant model, created by the Founders and upheld by the courts, of a respectful accommodation of religious belief,” said Ron Crews, the Alliance’s executive director.

“A military chaplain, just like a chaplain in a town council meeting, cannot fulfill his or her duties with the federal courts looking over one shoulder and a hypothetical observer looking over the other to assess when a religious activity may make an observer feel like an outsider.”

Seeing trouble ahead, Congress added a “Right of Conscience” (Section 533) to the National Defense Authorization Act. When signing the law in January, Mr. Obama declared the religious freedom guarantee “ill advised and unnecessary.”

Really? A base commander in Alaska recently ordered the removal of a Website column by Chaplain Lt. Col. Kenneth entitled, "No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II.” A soldier got reprimanded for serving food from Christian-owned Chick-fil-A and for commenting on federal marriage law at his promotion party. Christian leaders such as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Franklin Graham have had military appearances cancelled. This is just the tip of an anti-religion iceberg.

England, whose Common Law informed America’s ideas about religious freedom, is even further down the road to ruin. A homosexual couple says they will sue to use government power to coerce a church into performing their “wedding.”

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow told the Essex Chronicle that despite obtaining a civil union in 2006 with the rights and benefits of marriage, “I am still not getting what I want…. It upsets me because I want it so much – a big lavish ceremony, the whole works, I just don’t think it is going to happen straight away.”

No, the unraveling of a civilization takes time, even when it’s proceeding at blinding speed, aided by government coercion.